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Snowden and Vanunu: Spies, Whistleblowers, Movies and Books

“How America Lost Its Secrets: Edward Snowden, the Man and the Theft,” by Edward Jay Epstein will be released on January 17

“Beyond Nuclear: Mordechai Vanunu’s FREEDOM of SPEECH Trial and My Life as a Muckraker” the unauthorized biography of Israel’s nuclear whistle blower was published in 2010

By Eileen Fleming

Edward Snowden and Mordechai Vanunu claim to be whistleblowers.

Others view Snowden and Vanunu as hero, traitor, spy or muse.

“How America Lost Its Secrets: Edward Snowden, the Man and the Theft,” promises to be the “groundbreaking exposé that convincingly challenges the popular image of Edward Snowden as hacker turned avenging angel, while revealing how vulnerable our national security systems have become–as exciting as any political thriller, and far more important.”

Author Edward Jay Epstein studied government and received a Ph.D from Harvard in 1973. His master’s thesis on the search for political truth: “Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth” and doctoral dissertation: “News From Nowhere”, are two of his so far 14 published books.

Numerous petitions have circulated seeking President Obama pardon Snowden calling him a hero and whistleblower. Epstein presents the case why Obama cannot.Epstein wrote for Newsweek:

Whether Snowden’s theft was an idealistic attempt to right a wrong, a narcissistic drive to obtain personal recognition, an attempt to weaken the foundations of the surveillance infrastructure in which he worked, or all of the above, by the time he stepped off that Aeroflot jet in Moscow, it had evolved, intentionally or not, into something much simpler and far less admirable.

He was disclosing vital national secrets to a foreign power. Conjectures about Snowden’s motives matter less than the undeniable fact that he was greatly assisted in his endeavors by powerful enemies of the United States. That is why he can never be pardoned.

I spent three years investigating “Snowden’s story for my book, How America Lost Its Secrets: Snowden, the Man and the Theft.”

I went to the places in Hawaii and Japan where Snowden worked for the NSA, the places he staged his anti-surveillance “crypto-parties” in Honolulu, and to Moscow, where I interviewed former Russian intelligence officers, Kremlin insiders and the lawyer who serves as Snowden’s intermediary there.

Aside from Oliver Stone—who paid this lawyer $1 million, supposedly for the rights to his novel—I am the only American journalist to interview him face-to-face. What I learned, bit by bit, from my many months of investigation, was that the key parts of Snowden’s story, although endlessly repeated in the media as fact, do not check out.

Mr. Snowden’s theft of America’s communication secrets occurred in May 2013, when he was a 29-year-old technologist and analyst-in-training for the consulting firm of Booz Allen Hamilton at the regional base of the National Security Agency (NSA) in Oahu, Hawaii.

About six weeks after being hired, Snowden failed to show up for work, emailing his supervisor that he was at the hospital being tested for epilepsy.

According to Epstein, Mr. Snowden was already in Hong Kong with a cache of secret data that he had stolen from the NSA.

Epstein wrote for The Wall Street Journal:

As became clear during my investigation over the past three years, nearly every element of the narrative Mr. Snowden has provided, which reached its final iteration in Oliver Stone ’s 2016 movie, “Snowden,” is demonstrably false…

According to a unanimous report declassified on Dec. 22 by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the investigation showed that Mr. Snowden had “removed” 1.5 million documents…

The Pentagon’s investigation during 2013 and 2014 employed hundreds of military-intelligence officers, working around the clock, to review all 1.5 million documents.

Most had nothing to do with domestic surveillance or whistle blowing.

They were mainly military secrets, as Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the House Armed Services Committee on March 6, 2014.

It was not the quantity of Mr. Snowden’s theft but the quality that was most telling.

Since the agency was created in 1952, Russia and other adversary nations had been trying to penetrate its Level-3 secrets without great success…

The State Department invalidated Mr. Snowden’s passport while he was still in Hong Kong, not after he left for Moscow on June 23…

That the U.S. acted against him while he was still in Hong Kong is of great importance to the timeline because it points to the direct involvement of AEROFLOT, an airline which the Russian government effectively controls.

Aeroflot bypassed its normal procedures to allow Mr. Snowden to board the Moscow flight—even though he had neither a valid passport nor a Russian visa, as his newly assigned lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, said at a press conference in Russia on July 12, 2013…

The intelligence war did not end with the termination of the Cold War; it shifted to cyberspace…

This American writer’s degree is in nursing but I became a cyber reporter in 2005 inspired by Vanunu Mordechai.

A serendipitous encounter with Vanunu at St. Georges Cathedral in east Jerusalem led to a series of interviews focused on Vanunu’s childhood, struggles with God and the crisis of conscience that led to a few harrowing hours photographing top-secret locations within Israel’s nuclear facility at Dimona.

A few weeks before Vanunu gave London’s SUNDAY TIMES his two rolls of film, Mossad spies kidnapped Vanunu from Rome. To this day the TIMES retains Vanunu’s Dimona photos.

Because Vanunu was still “waiting” for Israel to allow him to leave the state in 2015, I published “Heroes, Muses and the Saga of Mordechai Vanunu” who has never been my hero but the muse who inspired me to realize my childhood dream of being an author and reporter.

As of this writing Vanunu is still “waiting” for his right to leave Israel but spending time growing his cult following as Vanunu Mordechai at Facebook.

On January 2, Vanunu Mordechai posted at Facebook: “To all those who are not familiar with this story, or want to know more about Israel nuclear secrets, all are in this movie” [SECRET WEAPON] adding it is “almost true, few changes…for selling the movie.”

As of this writing one VHS copy of SECRET WEAPON is available at Amazon and this trailer:

Turner Home Entertainment released their “Fact-based story of an Israeli government agent assigned to use her beauty as well as intelligence to snag a man on the run with atomic secrets” in 1990.

Regarding the sex scene depicted in the trailer:

In March 2006, after the taping of “30 Minutes with Vanunu“which documents Vanunu responding to my questions based on the UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS –because the Establishment of Israel’s very statehood was contingent upon upholding it- I asked Vanunu: what was he was thinking when he took off with Cindy the American Israeli Mossad spy.

When Maxwell’s paper published my photo without ever talking to me and some of the stolen Dimona photos with a very bad story against me, I knew the Mossad was after me.

Cindy said she had a sister in Rome and I thought I would be safe there until I could return to London. We went to movies and art galleries, I trusted her.

But, as soon as I got into the apartment, I was hit on the head and drugged.

When I woke up and they took me for interrogation, they threw the Times article on the table and said, ‘Look, what you did.’

I was so relieved they had published it and that I had done what I did…

This American writer is relieved for having done what I did by way of documenting Vanunu’s saga because others have reported on Vanunu without ever interviewing him; and because the Vanunu saga keeps getting more interesting:

This week Israeli police began interviewing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has been under investigation for graft. Arnon Milchin is a main figure in the case.

During my short stint at VeteransToday on 19 July 2011, I wrote:

“Confidential: The Life of Secret Agent Turned Hollywood Tycoon Arnon Milchan,” is an unofficial biography about the Hollywood producer, longtime weapons dealer, Israeli intelligence agent and close friend of Israeli President Shimon Peres.

Milchan met with the authors, Meir Doron and Joseph Gelman, answered their questions, corrected their mistakes and quoted Peres as stating, “I am the one who recruited him.”

In the 1970’s, Peres was Minister of Defense when he recruited Milchan as an agent for Lakam, a ‘secret’ unit in Israel’s defense ministry that purchased technological parts and materials for Israel’s WMD program.

“Since its founding in the mid-1950’s, the agency was headed by Benjamin Blumberg…Blumberg was Milchan’s friend, and used him (as well as other Israeli businessmen) to set up straw companies around the world, and to open secret bank accounts for financing the nuclear plant in Dimona and other Israeli security industries.

“Lakam was in effect an intelligence unit dealing with technological and scientific espionage, and served as a kind of ‘theft contractor’ for the Israeli security industry…For years, Milchan operated in secret, yet in the mid-1980’s U.S. customs uncovered an attempt to smuggle ‘switches’ – equipment that can be used both for medical purposes and for nuclear weapons manufacture – by the California-based Milco company, owned by Milchan…

The FBI began an investigation into Milchan’s affairs, yet he has never been charged.

According to the book, right after the ‘switches’ fiasco Milchan called his friend Peres, then prime minister, and asked for his help in dealing with the Ronald Reagan administration. Milchan is quoted in the book as saying he never received money for his services, and that everything he did was for the state of Israel.

I concluded that article [and this one] stating:

There’s no denying that unless nuclear weapons are abolished and all people are free and equal; the world will remain in a state of madness run by hypocrites in high places.

-Eileen Fleming, Senior Non-Arab Correspondent and Health Reporter for TADN, ran for US HOUSE in 2012 on a Platform that included ending federal regulations on cannabis, to establish every June 8 to be known as USS LIBERTY Remembrance Day, and to end USA collusion in Israel’s nuclear deceptions and military occupation of Palestine.

Senior Non-Arab Correspondent for The Arab Daily NewsProducer "30 Minutes with Vanunu" who founded WeAreWideAwake.org in response to her first of 8 trips to both sides of The Wall in Palestine Israel.In 2012, Eileen ran for US House of Representatives District 5, in Fl. Read her FREE eBooks and more at:http://www.eileenfleming.org/